Three Focus programs demonstrate this vitality, offering new ideas for how to make and share films, and especially how to reconnect with lost spaces.

Shot almost entirely over the last decade, many of these projects are spearheaded by women. For example, Dania Bdeir and her film Warsha (photo 1) bowled the festival over in 2021. Her short, also awarded at Sundance, highlights the difficulties of a Syrian migrant in the heights of Beirut. Hung from a towering crane, he is at last free.

In this uncertain context, the young generation of filmmakers that does not resort to exile instead resorts to inexpensive techniques such as video. This is how an entire culture of video art, at the crossroads of experimental film and documentary film, has taken root in Lebanon. Artists like Wael Noureddine explore this approach. With films like Ça sera beau – From Beirut with Love (photo 2), he makes use of kinetic editing, calligraphic collage, and musical mosaic to serve his heroic conception of film, “A camera is dangerous, when one makes images, one makes them for ‘eternity,’ it is a responsibility to make images.” With Pasolini at heart and F.J. Ossang on the soundtrack, the film radiates and resonates painfully with current events.

New to the festival, Les Chenilles (photo 3) by sisters Michelle et Noel Keserwany, won he Golden Bear for short film at Berlinale in 2023. Inspired by the difficult work conditions of women in French silk factories of the 19th century in the Levant, in particular on Mount Lebanon, the Keserwanys create a contemporary history that also addresses the question of emigration.

Ely Dagher won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2015 with his short film Waves ’98 (photo 4). In 1998, the Lebanese capital is filled with hope. Eight years after the civil war, it tries to rebuild itself with its inhabitants and its youth by closing over its injuries and its fractures. But a decade later, optimism seems to have sunk, urban problems multiply, the poor state of the buildings and constant instability gnaw at Beirut. Filmmaker Ely Dagher grew up in this context, oscillating between the incurable weariness and the profound love he has for his city. Screening for the first time in Clermont-Ferrand, his film uses a particularly beautiful animation technique, blending pure drawing and still photography. The director presents a touching homage to his city, so hated and yet so loved.

The lives of Maki, an Ethiopian woman, a suicidal immigrant worker, and Zorro, an unemployed actress, cross paths when a diamond-trafficking operation in Beirut goes wrong. With an explosive cast and fast-paced directing, Maki & Zorro (photo 5) is an action film that astonishes. The playfulness and rhythm that Rami Kodeih, the film’s director, breathes into the film, will keep audiences glued to their seats.

Just like White Noise (photo 6), we remain close to a genre film: Said is on his first shift as a night security guard under a large bridge in Beirut. Between local gang leaders and a suicidal vagabond, equipped only with a walkie-talkie and a flashlight, he tries to perform his duties seriously. By sunrise, the city will have swallowed him. Co-directed by Lucie La Chimia & Ahmad Ghossein, this film had a great festival career.

A fourth program is entirely dedicated to a friend of the festival: Wissam Charaf, whose films were presented in competitions and awarded several times in Clermont-Ferrand. He was a jury member of the National competition in 2020. His film, If the Sun Drowned Into an Ocean of Clouds, won the National jury’s Special Prize during last year’s festival. A self-taught filmmaker, Wissam has a background in journalism and is used to shooting quickly. His shorts paint a portrait of a Lebanon filled with poetry and hemmed with an absurdist and minimalist humor in the style of Kaurismäki.

Thanks to Oiseaux-Tempête, we had the chance to meet activists and artists who decided that creation and action should win over and open a happier chapter for the country, in Khamsin, by Grégoire Orio & Grégoire Couvert, presented in our Decibels! program in 2020. We invite you to check out this consequential music in the Decibels program, entirely dedicated to Lebanon.  There we’ll find Nadim Tabet, who reunites in Enfin la nuit (photo 7) the two authoritative figures of the Lebanese music scene: Fadi Tabbal et Charbel Haber. The film pays homage to the mythical club AHM, the four pieces of Enfin la nuit accompany the images of a Beiruti youth that was dancing still, one month before the explosions, in the euphoria of festive nights. A pure jewel rendered sublime by Vincent Moon’s images, Nâr deploys its curls at the first rays of daylight at the very top of the Mkaless building, the beating heart of Beirut’s independent music scene (photo 8). Filmmaker Jessy Mousallem films agricultural workers in the Bekaa valley and plain. Her Heart of Sky (photo 9) has a familiarity with the music videos of The Blaze, blending the electronic music of Damian Lazarus & The Ancient Moon with masterful directing.

A Collections program is devoted to the most important filmmaking voice of this period: Jocelyne Saab (photo 10). Being born into the Beiruti Christian bourgeoisie did not prevent Jocelyn Saab from becoming an unrelenting leftist activist. Her trilogy on Beirut tells the story of “her” war in heart-wrenching documentaries. Fragments of the past rise to the surface thanks to her creative force. As is often the case, women are key in retrieving memory as a tool of analysis and a step forward in an acceptance of an impossible resilience. A second Collection program, Letters (photo 11), formidably captures a tumultuous Lebanon in 2024, with the war in Gaza as the backdrop. The film connects 18 filmmakers who transform personal narratives into cinematographic reflections, weaving a mosaic of resilience and creativity in the midst of regional and international changes. This collaborative film project initiated by Josef Khallouf brings together these Lebanese filmmakers from different horizons. The initiative begins with each participant writing to a letter to respond to the question, “What do you feel at this very moment?”

Sound effects: behind the scenes

The world of cinema often starts in studios, with silence giving way to the magic of foley artists. In The Secret World of Foley (England, 2014 – photo 1), like a magician revealing his tricks, we discover the behind-the-scenes world of sound effect creation. Foley artists recreate the sounds of a film set in a fishing village, where each step on the pebble beach, each and every movement is music of its own. This invisible but crucial work is a detailed art that feeds the illusion of reality.

The process is even more riveting in Hacked Circuit (USA, 2014 – photo 2), in which a sequence shot portrays the sonic recreation of the final scene of Coppola’s The Conversation (USA, 1974). The sounds of the Californian street plunge us in a universe of surveillance and control, where tension rises with each sonic breath, making us witness to an omnipresent paranoia.

When sound awakens hidden emotions

Sound has the capacity to awaken hidden emotions and fears. On the Origin of Fear (Indonesia, 2016, Lab Competition 2017 – photo 3), is a striking example of this. Set in a suffocating atmosphere, a voice actor, isolated in a studio, lends his voice to characters with a violent past. While the director remains invisible, sounds and voices are charged with embodying terror, transforming the studio space into a haunted site where fear becomes tangible.

This exploration of the invisible also resonates in La Peur, petit chasseur (Fear, Little Hunter) (France, 2004, National Grand Prize 2005 – photo 4) of the late Laurent Achard. Here, sound becomes its own full-fledged character. In a nine-minute static shot, a house appears to be calm, but the surrounding sounds tell a whole different story, creating an invisible, almost palpable, tension. The film demonstrates the power of off-camera shooting, or how sound can conjure the invisible and allow a silent anguish to rise the surface.

A different way to hear the world

Sound can also reveal inner experiences, transforming our relationship to the world and to ourselves. Two powerful films adhere to this notion, Notes on Blindness (England, 2016, Lab Competition 2014 – photo 5) and O Menino que Morava no Som (The Boy Who Lived In The Sound) (Brazil, 2022 – photo 6).

Notes on Blindness follows theologian John Hull, who has become blind, through a sonic journal that captures his experience of blindness. Every sound becomes an essential sensory landmark, replacing sight and creating a unique universe in which the absence of image reinforces the intensity of sounds. The viewer is invited to “see” with their ears, and to feel the invisible world with unprecedented intensity.

In O Menino que Morava no Som by Felipe Soares, we follow Timba, a deaf young man who comes from a Brazilian suburb. Isolated from the lack of contact with Brazilian Sign Language, Timba must navigate the frustration of being unable to communicate his desire for interaction. His situation is made worse by a society that isn’t always accepting of deafness, with some families opting for cochlear implants. This film paints a sensitive portrait of the social and personal barriers that Timba faces, all while revealing the force and the complexity of the sonic universe in which he evolves. Between the silences and the amplified sounds of everyday life, we discover a world of emotions unsaid, where communication is just as much a struggle as it is a desire.

Another film, Di Shi San Ye (Thirteenth Night) (China, 2023, Lab Competition 2024 – photo 7) by Rachel Xiaowen Song, explores the disturbing impact a mysterious telephone call has on the life of Xiaoxue, a grieving young woman. After receiving a phone call from her late fiancé, she finds herself confronted with paranormal forces that throw her existence into disarray. With its blend of psychological suspense and paranormal elements, the film plunges us into a deep sensory exploration, where sound and noise create an atmosphere of discomfort and uncertainty, reinforcing the feeling of loss and distortion of reality.

When sound changes our perception of daily life

In En Cordée (France, 2016, Award for Best Original Score 2017 – photo 8), by Matthieu Vigneau, sound detaches itself from image, generating a subtle discordance. Through an out-of-sync voice-over on images of a hike, the film establishes a dissonance that disturbs our perception and creates a discrete but striking tension. Everyday life, though familiar, becomes strange, reminding us that sound has the power to change reality.

Some films push the limits even further, transforming sound into a full sensorial experience. Plot Point (Belgium, 2007, Lab Special Jury Prize 2008 – photo 9) by Nicolas Provost, for example, immerses us in the nighttime streets of New York, where life is amplified by desynchronized sounds and oppressing music. Times Square becomes a space that is fascinating and disturbing all at once, where sound distorts our perception of reality.

Nature itself becomes an open-air orchestra in Polyfonatura (Norway, 2019 – photo 10) by Jon Vatne, where each natural sound becomes a note of a symphony, offering an immersive experience in which sonic art blends with the natural environment.

The aim of this competition is to :

• to promote the creation of music for film in all its forms and diversity: live action, animation, experimental film.
• to support composers of all aesthetic backgrounds, origins and experience.
• to bring composers together with other players in the profession, directors, producers, agents, etc.
• to promote the professional integration of composers developing their careers.

Several categories are available, and each candidate may enter one or more of them:

• fiction film (continuous shooting)
• animated film
• experimental film
• screenplay-based music composition

As painter and video artist, Marie Larrivé developed her art in still and moving images during her studies at ENSAD Paris. Trained in the techniques of model making, traditional animation and painting, she has explored different types of narrative forms using these media. The questions of movement and fiction are at the heart of her work.

We discovered her filmmaking talent with Noir-Soleil, presented in national competition at the 2022 Clermont-Ferrand short film festival (and for which she won the SACD prize for best French-language animation film). Marie is also credited for the script, graphics and set design on Margarethe 89 by Lucas Malbrun, shown in national competition in 2024.

This poster is now available to you in landscape format:

– A1 size (51,4 x 84,1 cm) 

– A2 size (42 x 59,4 cm) 

– postcard (10,5 x 15 cm)

Or for Clermont-Ferrand residents at following locations:

The title is a nod to Chris Marker who was active in the social and political reality of several countries, but was also the creator of a body of work centered on memory. Many of the films in the 2024 Lab competition echo that: they are committed, full of life and totally of their time. The Mexican filmmaker Julio Hernández Cordón brandishes his camera as a way to construct a collective memory, and the way he transmits tales of resistance is masterly, summoning popping, motivated young people. With Los Rayos de una Tormenta, he refocuses debate about the impact of colonialism on his country.

In 1997, René Vautier was a member of the International Jury. An activist for citizen filmmaking and for films with a social impact, he was pleased with those daring films. He made Afrique 50, an anticolonialist tract. He would certainly have appreciated Até Onde o Mundo Alcança by the Brazilian filmmaker Daniel Frota de Abreu who provides a surprising condemnation of the long-term effects of colonialism on Brazil.

Xacio Baño, a passionate Galician director, takes a look at the photographs that we discard as we sift through them. When enough of them pile up, they begin to trace an outline, a map of the imaginary country that exists within us. In Non te Vexo, we arrange, sift through and accumulate signs, and fool ourselves into thinking we’re going to show them to someone.

How would Chris Marker have made use of Artificial Intelligence? It’s a moot question but one that makes you want to watch Level 5 again. In 512X512 Arthur Chopin approaches the zone of immemory that Marker was fond of. Deep in the bowels of AI, he prompted, corrected and regenerated, and the result is both fascinating and terrifying. The same sorts of unexpected things crop up as with more traditional creative approaches. The mix of technology and poetic language takes on a level of interest because it implies subjectivity. You’ve got to be creative!

Bill Morrison is back in competition again after having several films selected at Clermont-Ferrand, directing feature films and being a member of the Lab Jury in 2014. While he has a habit of magnifying the archival aspect of his film, with Incident, he moves out of his comfort zone: using the internet allows him to document and implacably catalogue the police violence that occurred in Chicago in 2018.

Via Dolorosa is both a suffocating plunge into the Jerusalem of director Rachel Gutgarts, and an introspective journey into her life. The film explores her discovery of her sexuality, her addiction to drugs and her intensely graphic and hallucinatory vision of religion. That is how she draws a little-known portrait of her hometown.

The 2023 retrospective dedicated to Taiwan was an occasion to focus on up-and-coming talents such as Pang-chuan Huang. After winning two important awards at Clermont-Ferrand, he is back with Petit cahier de cinéma, where he experiments with different developers for his film; red wine gives a violet tint to the French part of his film. What a lovely way to celebrate his love of film and of our country.

Let’s be honest: 2023 was not an easy year. Some of the people in our International Competition also took one on the chin, and we’d rather laugh than cry about it with them. In the Indonesian director Khozy Rizal’s Basri and Salma in a Never-Ending Comedy, a childless couple feels pressured by their family to procreate, to the point that they sing (literally). In Kakor, by Alessandro Stigliano (Sweden), a man decides to lash out at the rigid hierarchy by joining his young fatherhood to his love of pastries in an… unappetizing way. You’re Invited to Tuscan’s 5^th Birthday Party! (US) is another story of blondes and cakes, where a mother tries to reel in the fiasco that her son’s birthday party has become due to a sad story of a pony.

Mother to mother, the same need to open the flood gates. In If You’re Happy, Phoebe Arnstein (UK) sets the stage for a remarkable performance by Erin Doherty, who plays Princess Anne in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown, and here plays a mother struggling with the pressures of motherhood. Another well-known “princess” from our 2024 lineup is Emma d’Arcy who goes from playing Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon to a young stagehand who dreams of becoming the next movie star in The Talent, by the Irish filmmaker Thomas May Bailey. Though families are sometimes a burden, the ones we choose are often a source of solace: in the poignant film Après-coups (Quebec, Canada), women who are victims of domestic violence make “sisterhood” fashionable again. Lastly, the streets of Colombia in Entre las sombras arden mundos welcome a mother who is looking for her son and for a little bit of comfort.  

But let’s talk about movies: some films in the competition captivate through their ingenious use of sequence shots, grabbing the viewer and plunging them directly into the heart of the action, making them a sort of actor in what they’re shown. The Portuguese director Basil da Cunha’s 2720 takes us through the streets of one of Lisbon’s underprivileged neighborhoods, following the fortunes of two characters who pass by each other without ever meeting in the labyrinth of streets and moments of humanity. Et eksempel: Dem på gulvet by Selma Sunniva (Denmark) also talks about humanity: people rubbing elbows in a psychiatric asylum on a day like any other… or maybe not. Animation is continually in motion, leading us from one style to the next. Finland’s Nun or Never! is both classic and very classy, tracing the doubts and dreams of nuns that will blow your cassock off. In Wander to Wonder, we’re happy to see the director Nina Gantz’s silky style again, after she was in competition in 2015 with Edmond: here she unveils the unexpected backstage events of a show for young people that is anything but childish. Lastly, a giant (feline) leap towards the future with Miisufy (Estonia), where a group of digital cats dream of breaking free.

A thirst for freedom is also at the heart of many of our international films, like a never-ending shout. The end of individual freedoms for Afghan women, as seen in Elham Ehsas’ Yellow, where music, colors, laughing and glances cross and resonate one last time before they disappear, behind a veil. The freedom that was lost a long time ago and the freedom that we regain, a little, in a simple shared fruit, as happens in Une orange de Jaffa (Palestine), where a young man tries desperately to find his mother in Gaza. People who think they’re witnessing their own struggle for freedom, their perspective tinged with naivete, as in the exceptional and rare Sudanese documentary, Suddenly TV, which follows a fake TV crew through the streets full of militarism, repression and people on the make. Lastly, from detectives to the frontiers of science fiction (A Black Hole Near Kent County, United States), the faded colors of an Indian river and its inhabitants (Virundhu), and an invasion of grasshoppers that ravage the Italian countryside (Tilipirche), the International Competition is rife with environmental concerns, revealing a collective and necessary consciousness across the globe.

Universal themes spring from the heart of this year’s competition: first love, mourning, unexpectedly healthy encounters, departures that are either eagerly-awaited or prevented, hampered returns… The captivating stories are windows that open onto lives we can identify with, stories that transpose the state of the world in its most abject reality and its most crushing ordinariness, but stories that also resonate deep within each of us. We’ll meet Mr. and Mrs. Everyperson: middle-aged characters who miserably reach a much-deserved but disappointing retirement; invisible people who work the night shift far from the light; free spirits who live like hermits, giving free reign to their fantasies and recording birds; young women trying to move out or to have children; and young men trying to change the world or simply to have a relationship.

Also take note of the variety of animation films – no fewer than ten! Blending fiction and documentaries, they are remarkable for many reasons, not least for the techniques they use: the traditional 2D pen drawings in  Margarethe 89 and the colored pencil rotoscopy of Été 96, the stop-motion on paper cutouts in Father’s Letters, which is having its world premiere here, the several thousand watercolor drawings of La Perra, the digital 3D in the hypnotic film Au 8^ème jour, and lastly, the very rare screen made of pins that is deftly manipulated in La Saison pourpre.

The filmmakers you might meet at the screenings, and most certainly on the streets of Clermont-Ferrand next February, are worthy representatives of what the Festival crew strives to share with audiences: promising young filmmakers, established artists, a few regulars and others who have earned the recognition of their peers. Among the latter category, in competition is 27, a short film by the Hungarian director Florà Ana Buda which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year. Alongside it is La Voix des autres, the first film by Fatima Kaci, a student at La Fémis, which allows us to see the perspective of an interpreter for whom translation becomes a weapon used to help the refugees whose legacies she transcribes. Jean-Benoît Ugeux and Wissam Charaf will also be on hand. The former will present Hiver. We’ve met Ugeux several times both in front of and behind the lens: he is an actor and director who enjoyed the support of the SQP team during a writing residency. The latter is a Lebanese filmmaker who shot his most recent feature film in 2022 Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous and caps his sixth Festival selection with one of the competition’s loveliest titles: Et si le soleil plongeait dans l’océan des nues [If the Sun Drowned In an Ocean of Clouds].

Two French short films stand out: Avec l’humanité qui convient and Ma poule will be representing France in the International Competition. Both are first films made by Kacper Checinski and Caroline Ophelie, respectively, that deal with clear issues and offer completely contrasting atmospheres. One is a suffocating social thriller ably brought to life by a tense Joséphine de Meaux, who is deeply moved by the suffering of an unknown woman; the other shows the outdoor journey of a dreamy man (played by Sam Louwyck) who’d like it if his depressed chicken started enjoying life a bit.

For the first – and, we hope, only – time in its history, the Festival will be reducing the number of programs in its competitions. The National selection will go from twelve to ten programs, and the International from fourteen to twelve.

But make no mistake: reducing the number of films selected does not mean that their overall quality has declined; quite the opposite. Cinematic production has never flourished so abundantly, either nationally or internationally. Cinema’s heart has never stopped beating, and Clermont-Ferrand remains the lungs of the short form.

Therefore it is with great regret that we’ve had to take the necessary step of cutting four programs for 2024. We will make every effort to bring them back for 2025. Fewer programs means fewer films, which in turn means fewer filmmakers on hand to walk our streets, visit local businesses and theaters, meet our audiences who are passionate about the short form, and take advantage of the vast professional resources at the Short Film Market for finding distributors, producers and financiers for their upcoming projects.

All the same, we bet that fans of short film will find what they’re looking for in the nearly seventy programs screening in theaters, for all ages and tastes over the nine days of cinema and celebration.

These circumstances have also had an impact on our box office, which will still be open online; physical points of sale will also be available.

Given the global economic context, we’ve had to adjust our prices, but we’ve tried  to have the smallest impact on our audiences.

Moving forward, single tickets will cost 4.50€ (rather than the 4€ they’ve cost since 2020), while the usual book of fifteen tickets will go up from 35 to 40€ (or 2.70€ per ticket), with the last change in price occurring in 2013.

Despite this adjustment, which we’ve tried to keep as small as possible, the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival remains one the most reasonable local, national and international shows in terms of price and an affordable, public event.

Moreover, the tickets in the book of fifteen are not assigned, so you can always share them with your family and friends and go to any screening.*  

* Excluding the Opening, Closing and Children’s screenings, which require special tickets.

In 2014, the Festival began an online daily blog, La Brasserie du Court, a “logbook” that was updated constantly throughout the Festival, hosting written and video interviews with all the filmmakers who had a film in one of the year’s three official competitions. On the one hand, those valuable interviews were proof that the filmmakers really did attend the Festival, and they were also a means to dig deeper into the origins, production secrets and influences on their films. The articles became an indispensable resource over the years, produced by a team of editors, translators and video editors. For financial reasons, we’re putting the blog on hold for 2024, just before its tenth anniversary. We hope to be able to bring back the Brasserie du Court in the coming years. You will of course still be able to consult the interviews from previous years online.

We’ll keep you up to date on all the latest news relating to the Festival through our social media and through this newsletter. Tell your friends and family to subscribe so they get the latest updates too!

Mélody Boulissière & Bogdan Stamatin – Something Divine
A film produced by Marc Faye, who produced Riviera (2018), Trona Pinnacles (2021),
À travers Jann (2022) (Short Film Market Picks section in Clermont)

Tian Guan – The Poison Cat
Director of The Arrival of Aliens (Short Film Market Picks section in Clermont)

Gabb Est

Joanna Major

Lé l’équinoxe

Marthe

Neo Tao

Théo Laguet